At this point i was only worried about getting proportions to look decent. So everything was about major shape changes, and making sure his silhouette looked like a Crane. Later on I would start to work on his form to match concept better. Everything started with simple Zspheres.

His beak was particularly difficult since it required really clean geo. I used Panel Loops in Zbrush to achieve the desired effect.

Part 3: Panel loops Tutorial

I LOVE panel loops. I use it much more often than the extraction method as I feel I get much cleaner results with more customization from it. I created a little mini tutorial below, but there are many more in-depth tutorials online that go into more detail as to what all the settings actually do.

I'll post another update tomorrow with the next part of Jiro's high-poly blockout!

Replies

Here is part 2 of Jiro's Blockout: For the feathers I created a couple variations and placed them all manually around some blockout geometry. It was a tedious effort (about 2-3 hours total since I made a few mistakes along the way) but with good reference and patience, I feel like I did a decent job! For the final low-poly I plan on baking some of the feathers down, while keeping his primary feathers as cards so they can be rigged individually.

For creating the feathers, I used a fantastic tutorial by Manuel De Jorge -

I also made some adjustments to his overall shape to make him look a bit more imposing.

Lastly I worked on his feet!

Not much else to say other than I decided not to go too crazy on his feet scales since they will be covered by ankle guards later. However I used a masking in zbrush to very quickly sculpt out some of the more prominent scales, rather than rely on just alphas.

Unfortunately I will have to leave the sculpt for now, as I will be away from my computer for a couple weeks! But I will return in November to continue work on this guy!

I hope this information was useful to some of you guys! And as always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

I've started the low poly and just finished baking out his wings. Took a LONG time but I'm very happy with the results!

Here is a tutorial on how I baked his wings using Marmoset Toolbag 3. I would argue that in all my experience, Toolbag 3 has the best (and easiest) baking tools around. At least compared to Xnormal and Substance Painter.

Fantastic breakdowns, @WallStaringCat! The low poly is coming along really nicely, and the care you put into the wings definitely looks like it paid off. I hope you keep working on this guy. It would be awesome to see him all textured and posed!

Oh my gosh! I'm so excited that this thread made the front page! Sadly I was not able to complete the character for the Challenge, but I will continue to work on him and refine everything until he's done. I will also continue to post as many breakdowns and tutorials as I can to spread some more knowledge around!

Also for anyone interested. Here is a tutorial on how I created an outline for Jiro. Basically, all you need to do is duplicate your mesh, inflate the duplicate, reverse normals and apply an unlit material with backface-culling turned on.